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Derek Boshier, 1937 | Pop painter

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Dereck Boshier | David Bowie portrait

British painter, sculptor, photographer and printmaker. Derek Boshier studied painting and lithography at Yeovil School of Art in Somerset (1953-7), Guildford College of Art (1957-9) and the Royal College of Art, London (1959-62), where he was one of the students associated with Pop art. Boshier juxtaposed contrasting styles within his paintings, but he favoured topical subject-matter such as the space race, political events and the Americanisation of Europe. In the autumn of 1962 Boshier went to India on a one-year scholarship, producing paintings based on Indian symbolism (accidentally destr.).






Returning to England he adopted a hard-edged geometric style, often using shaped canvases, abandoning overt figuration but continuing to allude through form to architectural structures and to the grid plans of cities.
In 1966 Boshier turned briefly to sculpture, producing elemental shapes made of perspex and neon, in effect a jazzy version of nascent Minimalism. During the 1970s he experimented with different media, producing photographs, films, collages, constructions, books, posters and record covers. The diversity of this output was unified by his response to contemporary events, his insistence on the social context, his unmasking of the sinister aspects of advertising and his promotion of radical politics.
Boshier returned to painting in 1979, and in 1980 he took up a teaching post in Houston, Texas, where he began introducing poignant, sometimes comical, figures into his canvases. Often garishly coloured and rough in execution, these painted observations of human behaviour earned him a new and devoted following. | Marco Livingstone © Tate Gallery











Derek Boshier is represented in public collections worldwide, among them:

in Britain

  • United Kingdom Government Art Collection.
  • Arts Council of U.K.
  • The British Council Collection.
  • The Guildhall Museum, City of London.
  • The Tate Gallery of British Art, London, England.
  • The British Museum, London, England.
  • The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England.
  • The Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, Windsor Castle, England.
  • The National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland.
  • Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester.
  • City of Sheffield Galleries.
  • City of Portsmouth Art Gallery.

in The United States

  • The Brooklyn Museum, New York.
  • The Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona.
  • Palm Springs Desert Museum, California.
  • The Pacific Enterprise Collection, Los Angeles.
  • The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California.
  • Yale Centre of British Art, Connecticut.
  • The High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia.
  • The Contemporary Art Museum, Hawaii.
  • New Orleans Museum of Art. Louisiana.
  • The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
  • The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin.
  • The Dallas Museum of Art, Texas.
  • The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas.
  • The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas.
  • The El Paso Museum of Art, Texas.
  • San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas.
  • Amarillo Museum of Art, Texas
  • Museum of South East Texas, Beaumont.
  • Museum of South Texas. Corpus Christi.
  • Neuberber Museum, State University of New York at Purchase.
and also

  • Centre Pompidou, Paris
  • The National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Australia.
  • Peter Stuyvesant Collection, Holland.
  • The Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel.
  • The Museum of Art, Lodz, Poland.
  • The National Gallery of Poland, Warsaw, Poland.
  • The Calouse Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.
  • Berardo Museum, Lisbon, Portugal.
  • Centro Wilfredo Lam, Havana, Cuba



































































































Pittore, scultore, designer e artista sperimentale Britannico, Derek Boshier nacque nel 1937 e come Blake e Hamilton studiò pittura al Royal College of Art. Fu uno degli studenti del Royal College of Art a introdurre la pop art britannica nella mostra degli Young Contemporaries del 1961. Le opere di questo periodo si occupavano del potere di manipolazione della pubblicità, che tratta l’uomo come se fosse un prodotto di massa. Il coinvolgimento di Boshier nella pop art è stato comunque molto breve. 
Dal 1966 ha lavorato con la scultura, la fotografia, il cinema e l'arte concettuale, per poi tornare a dipingere nel 1979. Negli anni Ottanta ha insegnato pittura all’università del Texas. Sebbene la sua figura sia rimasta in secondo piano rispetto ad alcuni suoi colleghi della pop art dei primi anni Sessanta, molti critici ritengono che la sua opera abbia superato la prova del tempo almeno quanto la loro.